67. Notional words and function words in Modern English.

Parts of speech are traditionally subdivided into notional & functional ones. Notional parts of speech have both lexical & grammatical meanings (nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, numerals, statives, pronouns, modal words). Functional parts of speech are characterized mainly by the grammatical meaning while their lexical meaning is either lost completely or has survived in a very weakened form.

Functional parts of speech—the article, the preposition, the conjunction. Notional parts of speech are characterized by word-building & word-changing properties; functional words have no formal features & they should be memorized as ready-made units (but, since, till, until). Another most important difference between functional & notional parts of speech is revealed on the level of sentence. Where every notional word performs a certain synthetic function while functional words have no synthetic function at all. They serve as indicators of a certain part of speech (to + verb; a, the + noun). Prepositions are used to connect 2 words & conjunctions to connect 2 clauses or sentences.

Ilyish => Some grammarians think that words should be divided into two categories on the following principle:

notional words denote things, actions and other extra-linguistic phenomena

functional words denote relations and connections between the notional words

This view is shaky, because functional words can also express smth extra-linguistic:

e.g. The letter is on the table.

The letter is in the table. (diff. prepositions express different relations between objects)

The match was called off because it was raining. (the conjunction because denotes the causal connection between two processes).

Some words belonging to a particular part of speech may perform a function differing from that which characterizes the p/of/sp as a whole.

e.g. I have some money left. (have – a notional word)

I have found a dog. (have – an auxiliary verb used to form a certain analytical form of the verb to find, i.e. it is a functional verb)

68. Different interpretations of the meaning of the English articles. The main functions of the English articles.

Nouns are preceded by atr. though much has been written about art, the theory of it is still problematic. The meaning of the art is extremely abstract and hard to define, but the main meanings can be summarized as follows: the ind art – with count nouns – the nominating meaning, to name an object; with uncount nouns – aspective meaning (esp with abstract nouns – a dull anger, after a long silence), to bring out a special abstract of the notion, expressed by a noun. The definite art: with count nouns (sing, pl)– individualizing meaning – it singles out an object or a group of objects from all the other objects of the same class; with count nouns (sing)– the generic meaning (The cat is the domestic animal) – the noun becomes a composite image of the all class of objects; with uncount nouns – the restricting meaning – may restrict the abstract notion, expressed by a noun to a specific instance (I didn’t want to show the joy I felt), restricts the material denoted to a definite quality or locality (The water in the glass was too cold to drink – quality, The water in the lake was too cold to bathe in – location). The absence of the art. always has the nominating meaning, as it is parallel to the use of the ind art.

The art. have morph and syntactical functions. MF is to serve as a formal indicator of the noun. The presence of the art signals that what follows is a noun. The art has 2 SF: the art. separates the noun from other parts of the sentence; the art is one of the means that serve to connect sentences within a text (I’ve bought a book – correlates – The book is interesting). If we apply the theory of communication we can see that the art. has a communicating function (new and old info, theme and rhyme). The absence of the art.- new info, the def.art.- the theme of the communication.